I Am Not A Nolleywood Stereotype; I Am A Nurse By Ajah Kingsley RNDate Posted: 10/Oct/2018

My heart bleeds profusely whenever I see the kind of ideas, opinions and information, the movie industry feeds the public with about the Nursing profession all in the name of entertainment.

Not only is this an insult to the profession, it is equally heartrending for us who are professional Nurses seeing Nollywood heartlessly drag our immaculate image to the quagmire. In most of her medical TV shows/movies like clinic matters, sex clinic,calabar Nurses, horny nurses, nurses on night duty,tatafoo nurses, to mention but a few,Nollywood has unrepentantly portrayed the Nursing profession in a negative light.

Nurses are depicted as cruel,wicked, disrespectful,sassy,naughty,subservient, errand girls,"runs girls",harridans, villains, vixens, gossips,mischievous, drug addicts and prostitutes who sleep with both doctors and patients.

Just think of a Nurse in a Nollywood movie and anything negative comes to mind! It is that bad! I even saw a movie where a nurse stole and sold a baby in her care while another nurse was busy washing the doctor's car.

Who does that? This is freakishly crazy and it gets worse each day!

The implication of this stereotype is that it distorts people's perception about the Nursing profession and negatively influences their attitudes towards nurses in the real world. When most people see a nurse, all they remember is the low life nurse he/she saw in the movies. Little wonder only few persons value what nurses do.

As a matter of fact I once overheard a patient's relatives' discussion, one of them was like "leave all these nurses wey dey sleep with doctors, they no sabi anything".

I just felt like grabbing them by the jugular on hearing this, but I let it slide since meddling into people's discussion was rude. I couldn't blame them anyway. Why? Because what you see on TV influences how you think and how you think of course affects the way you behave. Nollywood helped shape their opinion about nurses.

Have you ever seen a male nurse character in any of Nollywood's medical dramas?

Do you know some people still think Nursing is for females only? If only the movie industry could employ the same energy she uses to tarnish the image of nurses in incorporating male Nurse characters in their movies, maybe a lot of people would know better!

Thanks to Men in nursing for defying this stereotype.

Just for the record, professional nurses don't grace the physician's bed.

We collaborate with them to provide solutions to your health problems.

We don't sleep with patients or steal their properties, we assess and plan care for them using the nursing process.

We are not gossips,harridans,drug addicts neither do we get involved in child trafficking, we abide by the ethics of our profession.

We are not the doctor's errand boys/maids neither do we wash their cars as the movies depict.

We double check their treatment plan and make inputs where necessary so you can get the best care,since carrying out an order blindly could be tantamount to malpractice.

We are not irresponsible,inferior or unintelligent set of people. We are professionals who have been trained intensively in Nursing and midwifery council approved institutions to give holistic care.

So there is no good putting a tag on a group of people based on what you saw on your favorite TV show. I suggest the government makes a policy that will address this abuse by the media.

And as for Nollywood, I would advise she gets a medical script nurse whose job is to consult with writers for TVs and film shows to help ensure accuracy of plots featuring medical or nursing related characters instead of feeding the public with false information about these professions.